Knight of the Demon Queen

Knight of the Demon Queen
Barbara Hambly

The second follow-up to Barbara Hambly’s enormously successful Dragonsbane.John Aversin and Jenny have returned to the Winterlands, where Jenny’s depression has deepened. Unable to help their son, Ian, through his own grief over separation from his demon, she returns alone to Frost Fell. Then, together with the great Black Dragon Morkeleb, they journey south to investigate rumours that someone has been raising the dead.Meanwhile, John is drawn into a dangerous bargain with the Demon Queen, whose formidable powers force John to begin a journey that will take him through a series of magical and terrifying Hells.Soon, John finds himself embroiled in worlds where he is clearly out of his depth, worlds inhabited by malevolent demons whose dark agenda sees them imprisoning the souls of the innocent in a bid for complete domination of both Man and Dragon.

BARBARA HAMBLY

Knight of the Demon Queen

Contents

Cover (#ub7801f43-f155-5f32-8cab-3ddc56dea76b)

Title Page (#u9bf87f02-e513-5309-80d5-7ea8e4ac0f8f)

Chapter 1 (#ufd40c664-2d3d-58c1-9968-2c91b0eda06b)

Chapter 2 (#u6c1a9236-d407-5200-8e04-2a06986f7335)

Chapter 3 (#u5eab3f1b-910e-5273-8695-50c757a3cd0f)

Chapter 4 (#u150174df-e2bc-596a-8961-e3db4ce3a238)

Chapter 5 (#ue54b1637-a096-58aa-9c12-b777cf4a05ed)

Chapter 6 (#ua71a7b7f-d46a-56d8-8579-a04c2ce09a9f)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_770c951f-f976-5128-beb5-327e3273b063)

Jenny Waynest’s son Ian took poison on the night of winter’s first snowfall. He was thirteen.

She was dreaming about the demon when it happened. The demon was called Amayon, beautiful as the night and the morning, and she had dreamed of him every night since fall, when his possession of her had ended. While her soul was imprisoned in a pale green crystal, he had inhabited her flesh and done such things as still made her wake weeping, or screaming, or speaking his name out of a longing so desperate she thought she would die of it.

In daylight the grief of his loss, and her shame at that grief, occupied her mind against her will, to the exclusion of all other things. Otherwise she would have seen—she hoped she would have seen—the pain and horror growing in her son’s eyes.

This night there was a part of her that knew where Ian was. In her dream she saw him in the small stone house on Frost Fell—the house that had been her master Caerdinn’s up to the old man’s death. Later Jenny had lived there, until she had gone with Lord John Aversin, Thane of the Winterlands and her lover of ten years, to live at Alyn Hold. Asleep in their bed at the Hold now, she saw their son in the old stone house, saw him descend the stair from the loft and with a glance, as wizards could, kindle the wood on the hearth.

He shouldn’t be there, she thought. It was past midnight and the snow had been falling since just before dark. He shouldn’t be there.

Rest, Amayon’s voice whispered. Sleepy dreams are better than plans and schemes.

Her consciousness drifted away.

Ever since the magics of the Demon Queen Aohila had taken Amayon from her, Jenny had tried to decide whether the pain she felt was a memory that Amayon had left or whether he spoke to her still. Sometimes she thought that she could hear his voice, gentle and trusting as a child’s, though he was Aohila’s prisoner behind the Mirror of Isychros. At other times she guessed that the coaxing sweetness, the hurtful mocking, were only a poison he’d left to make her suffer. How like him, she thought, and she did not know if she thought it fondly or with hatred.

Maybe both.

People who survived possession weren’t the same afterward.

Her mind returned to her son. He sat beside the hearth, his head bowed, thin fingers twisting at his dark hair.

She remembered her own pain when the demon who’d possessed her had been driven out.

At least he still has magic.

The loss of Jenny’s magic, as a result of the final battle with the demons, had been the worst of all.

You saved them, the sweet soft voice whispered in her mind: like Amayon’s voice, though sometimes it sounded like her own. You fought the demons for your son, and for Lord John, and for the Regent of the Realm. You did just as you ought. Yet you lost everything. How fair is that?

The image came to her of Ian casually brushing aside her spells of ward, running his hands over the terra-cotta pots of her poisons in the brassy dull firelight, but the vision melted with her resentment and her grief. Sleepy dreams, the voice coaxed. Lovely sleepy dreams. Of Amayon. Of magic.